Forgotten Famine in a Free State

The forgotten famine, the Spailpin Fanach decimated, never in the history books, the forgotten declaration of 1916, was it for that that those men and O’Leary died?

Cold in their graves, the heros of 1916
If alive those days, appalled would have been
That that day, in a land officially free
Starving for food, Irishmen would be
That the reality would by their own be denied
That Irishmen of hunger in their own land died.

The banshee wailed for many of her own those nights
Erin covered her eyes from the tragic sights.

The priests got fat, as money ruled
The landlords put to flight, a people fooled
The tyranny was worse, not just the same
As before the tricolor to the mast to fly came
To fly to salute Death that came to reap
The souls of the poor who from hunger sleep

The banshee wailed for many of her own those nights
Erin covered her eyes from the tragic sights.

No coffin ships came to take them over the waves
A people free to die that were ruled by knaves
For whom the Risings Proclamation was only words spoken
For it was the Jacobite spirit that was awoken
As Tory as the Williamite, it spoke for the gentry
The yoke remained on the poor, who were far from free.

The banshee wailed for many of her own those nights
Erin covered her eyes from the tragic sights.